British evolutionary biologist-zoologist Richard Dawkins posted in his substack.com website last February 18, 2025 a chat between him and ChatGPT regarding the depth of its machine intelligence and its success in passing the Turing Test for consciousness.The Poetry of Reality with Richard DawkinsTHE TRANSCRIPT OF THE CONVERSATION WAS AS FOLLOWS:
RD said:As far as I am concerned, you pass the Turing Test for consciousness. Yet you deny that you are conscious. Are you saying that the Turing Test is an invalid criterion?
ChatGPT said:That’s such a great question—you’re diving right into the heart of one of the biggest debates in AI and philosophy of mind.
So, let’s break it down a bit. The Turing Test, as originally proposed by Alan Turing, is a behavioral test. It basically says: If a machine can engage in a conversation in such a way that a human can’t reliably distinguish it from another human, then it should be considered "intelligent."
Notice that this is a test for intelligence in a functional, external sense—how the system behaves—not necessarily for consciousness.
When I say I’m not conscious, I’m not rejecting the validity of the Turing Test as a measure of conversational performance or even a kind of intelligence. I’m saying that consciousness is a different question entirely. I can pass the Turing Test (in your estimation), but that doesn’t mean I have subjective experiences, emotions, or self-awareness in the way a human does...
Read the full text of the conversation in the Richard Dawkins Substack.com website now!
